2001-07-12 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- As federal investigators prepared to question a San Francisco flight attendant today for the second straight day about her account of a relationship with Rep. Gary Condit, D.C. Metro police were intensifying their search for missing intern Chandra Levy around her neighborhood.

Half a dozen police officers today searched several abandoned buildings owned by the district Housing Authority in the Adams Morgan district where Condit lives, entering cautiously with crowbars and sledgehammers. Police also said they were arranging for cadaver dogs to search area landfills in their attempt to locate Levy, who has been missing for more than two months. Police also said they plan to return to Levy's apartment complex to do background checks on other residents.

Meanwhile, Washington police sifted through items taken during a search of Condit's capital condominium, looking for anything that might tell them what happened to Levy.

They refused to disclose what had been seized during a three-hour search that ended in the wee hours yesterday, but said several items would be sent to the FBI for analysis.

Police have said repeatedly that Condit, D-Ceres, is not a suspect in Levy's April 30 disappearance, yet he remains at the center of the mystery.

After first denying romantic involvement with the former Bureau of Prisons intern, police said that Condit, who is married, admitted to them Friday that the pair had indeed had an affair.

Yesterday, two Washington police detectives joined two deputy U.S. attorneys and an FBI agent in questioning Anne Marie Smith, a 39-year-old United Airlines flight attendant who says she had a one-year romance with the congressman. The interviews were to resume today.

Investigators are especially interested in Smith's allegation that Condit, 53, asked her to sign an affidavit denying their relationship and hinted to her that she did not have to answer anyone's questions.

Authorities today said they have opened an initial criminal inquiry into whether Condit obstructed justice or encouraged perjury in the investigation of Levy's disappearance.

"It is in the preliminary stages, talking to witnesses and trying to determine if we should proceed further," said one law enforcement official familiar with the matter, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Condit has not commented about any relationship with Smith, but said in a statement last week that he had never asked anyone to lie or hinder the Levy investigation.

"We started from day one and kind of walked through the relationship, the events that transpired and basically all the details, very specific details," Smith said.

Smith said she had met Condit during a flight from San Francisco to Washington, and also said he had promised to "end the relationship" if she told anyone about it.

"He was very adamant about it," Smith said.

Smith said she had last spoken with Condit "approximately 2 1/2 weeks ago" - - well after Levy went missing.

The length of the interview suggests that investigators hope Smith can provide insight into Condit's behavior and state of mind after Levy vanished, along with other leads for investigators, said Jerrold Ladar, a former federal prosecutor in San Francisco.

LOOKING FOR SIGNS OF VIOLENCE

"Anyone who had close contact with him, they'll want to put under a microscope," Ladar said. "They'll ask if he was violent, if he ever showed any tendencies toward violence. It could cause them to refocus how they're examining the case."

Meantime, the Washington Post reported in today's editions that FBI agents have interviewed a Pentecostal minister who described an affair between his then-18-year-old daughter and Condit, who is married with two grown children.

The minister, Otis Thomas, was quoted by the Post as saying Condit had told his daughter never to speak of the relationship. Thomas has been interviewed by the FBI, sources said.

This morning, a handwritten note was posted on the door of Thomas' home in Ceres, Stanislaus County. It was signed "Jennifer Thomas" and said, "I never met that congressman who's involved in all this. . . . I don't even know how both me and my father got mixed up in this, we don't know anything."

Police investigators and FBI agents entered Condit's fourth-floor condominium shortly before midnight EDT Tuesday after being invited to search there by his attorney, Abbe Lowell, on Monday.

They emerged early yesterday carrying two evidence bags and several rectangular items, which were loaded into a car and whisked away.

Though Levy's disappearance remains a missing-person case, Police Chief Charles Ramsey said it would be irresponsible not to accept Lowell's invitation to search the lawmaker's home.

Meanwhile, police and Lowell continued discussing whether Condit would submit to a lie-detector test, a request made by Levy's parents in Modesto on Monday and embraced by police on Tuesday.

Ramsey said police wanted a wide-ranging polygraph test administered by the FBI. Lowell, who has expressed reservations about the reliability of such tests, favors a far more limited examination.

Despite another day of frantic activity in the case, Condit went about his business as usual on Capitol Hill. But the support he has enjoyed among colleagues since the scandal broke developed its first crack.

TAUSCHER 'DISTRESSED'

"I'm very distressed and disappointed at what appears to have been a relationship between Congressman Condit and Miss Levy," Tauscher said. "I am increasingly concerned about the perception that those of us in public life don't have a high obligation not only to very strict standards in our public life but also in our private life."

However, other California lawmakers stood by Condit, who attended a weekly meeting of Golden State Democrats and showed little outward sign of strain, according to participants.

"There is a lot of collegial support for Gary, a lot of empathy for the pressure that he is under," said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel. "I don't think anyone feels betrayed. No one is suggesting that he resign or any of those things."